British Quakers share their thoughts on what Quakers believe.
Transcript
(bright upbeat music)
- Quakerism is a cool place to come
and ask things and not
get a straight answer.
They say, “ask one
question to four Quakers
and you’ll get five different answers.”
- Quakers, as a whole
believe that there is
that of God in everyone.
And that means to say
that every human being
is unique, is precious.
- Because God can speak through anyone,
then we’re all just as important,
just as equal as each other.
And for me, that’s something that I try
to live throughout my daily life,
- You could replace God
with good or goodness.
So everyone has this
potential of goodness.
- So we have our various testimonies,
including that of peace,
equality, integrity,
simplicity, sustainability.
So I’m constantly questioning am I living
in a way that is in
line with these values.
- Quakers generally find that
they explore faith through
searching through themselves,
which they often refer
to as, “The Inner Light.”
- I don’t necessarily have faith,
I have had experiences
and feeling of things.
To me, God is the feeling and
the connection between people.
- I feel that God is energy and a feeling
rather than actually a person.
- For me, it’s the unknown
or something that which
we can’t understand.
- You can experience it
when you’re in nature,
that interconnectedness of
everything on this planet,
it’s a living presence.
- Virtually what appeals
to me to Quakerism
as opposed to other other faith groups is
it’s propensity to accept change
and to accept that things
may not be necessarily
what they thought before.
- It evolves over time as society evolves,
and looks at changing society
and how we can reflect
that in our practice.
- It’s not uncommon
for someone to be a
Quaker and something else.
I know people who are Quakers and Hindus,
or Quakers and Buddhists,
or Quakers and Christians,
- It’s reasonably open and
reasonably free of…
several hundred year old
thousand year old rhetoric
that gets repeated continuously
and I quite like that.
- Obviously, Quaker Oats
has had a lot to do with
the perception of Quakers,
old people wearing hats.
There are lots of old Quakers,
some of us wear hats.
But I would say that Quakers are much more
vibrant community of people
than a lot of people perceive.
- The Quakers don’t subscribe
to a Creed like a list
of things that everyone has to agree on.
The essential thing is your experience,
and your experience is valid.
- Your faith is more than what
you do on a Sunday morning.
It’s going out and living it.
(bright upbeat music)